This Kickstarter chair is a body-motion VR controller
Go hands-free in your fight against the virtual hordes
What good is zooming around shooting virtual zombies if you always have to keep your sweaty palms on a real-life thumb-masher?
Sure, strapping on a headset that throws 3D thrillers at your eyes might seem superb, but using sticks for yaw means you’ll always be tied down by reality, man.
That is, until now: Vrgo’s egg-shaped sitter is a tilt-to-move motion controller that leans with you, leaving your hands free for full exploration of the virtual world. Simply tap one button and the Vrgo can connect as a keyboard or joypad, making it compatible with almost any platform. Use those hips, lean and tilt, and the Vrgo will see you, well, go.
What’s more, in joypad mode it’ll work in analogue, meaning faster movement the farther you lean – and, with a weighted bottom and fiendishly small form factor, there shouldn’t be too many face-meets-furniture incidents.
Put together from aircraft-grade materials and apparently packing the perfect-posture smarts of an exercise ball, the Vrgo might look like an upturned squid-meets-droid but it’s quite the clever cookie. It can even be opened up for storage of all your VR kit.
Rejoice, then, for the future of in-your-face gaming! Well, not quite. The Vrgo still requires you to be rooted to a device, even if it’s a more moveable one, and it remains to be seen whether sitting atop a blob-like controller does anything to eliminate the motion-sickness suffered by many.
Want to find out for yourself? Vrgo’s Kickstarter campaign is well and truly underway, with a whole host of pledging options: £200 will get you a chair, estimated to ship in May 2016.
Chris Rowlands
Freelance contributor